Computer systems have become a virtual necessity for the operation of any relatively large organization. For financial, membership or even asset information, there is no other device capable of tracking the activities of geographically diverse organizational operations administered by different people, possibly using different languages.
A computer system used by an organization will typically be provided with a number of databases to administer and track organizational activities. For example, one database may be provided for financial information (e.g., accounts receivable, accounts payable, etc.), another database may be provided to track progress towards organizational objectives (e.g., manufactured product, raw materials, etc.) and still another database may be provided to track organization membership (e.g., human resources, etc.).
A respective server may be provided as an interface between organizational members and the organizational databases. Where the needs for different parts of the organization are different (e.g., language), then an application specific interface (API) may be used to standardize a server interface to a common format.
Due to changing business conditions or otherwise, software components and systems eventually become outdated and must be updated or replaced. While the process may be relatively simple in the case of a personal computer, the process becomes considerably more complicated in networked systems having many servers and dependent applications that rely upon those servers. Because of the importance of servers and server systems, there is a continuing, ongoing need for better methods of updating computer systems.